Night Songs for the Birds of North America

January 2017 to March 2017

Night Songs is a four-channel audio composition exploring translation, memory, and mass extinction in the anthropocene, installed in the Lincoln Park Conservatory’s Fern Room, curated by Experimental Sound Studio. First, Dumas arranged six common human lullabies (challenging himself to do so from memory), stretching the songs’ durations to an hour’s length. Then Dumas gathered the calls of the 73 North American avian species considered vulnerable, endangered, and extinct. Dumas (piano), Whitney Johnson (strings), and Josh Bell (horns) improvised in response to the calls, and these recorded melodic fragments play at random, gradually degrading, becoming wind, over the duration of the exhibition.

Introspect at Philadelphia Screendance Festival

Introspect is a dance film conceived by and starring Elizabeth June Bergman. It was directed, filmed, and edited by Kaitlyn Busbee with directorial and cinematographic assistance from Mark Stastny. Introspect features original music by composer Joshua Dumas.

In this work, the company asks: “Is there a post-humanist self? Are we only human? What moves us in and out of our private physical island? Can we see the shade of our icebergs digging into the archive of the being before us?”

unfold into

Dages Juvelier Keates will perform in tandem with a sculpture by Elizabeth Tubergen, between it and a sound environment by Helene Kazan and a score by Joshua Dumas. The dance will nominally take place in the gallery, but the audience is invited to view it from the sidewalk of 5th Avenue. Keates’ work will attend to the interstice, to space between the Cities.

belladonna luna sonata

On an island estate, an aging maestro (alone but for his faithful butler) shares with a humble gardener his story of a life lived for music – oh, and the time he tried to destroy the world. A melanchomedy about music, lost love, memory, and literally world-shattering art.

Written by Robert StewartDirected by Greg PetersOriginal Music by Joshua Dumas

Weatherman – Wild Geese video

“An abstract travelogue of the last year or so of my life: Chicago, Iowa, Manhattan, Long Island, Brooklyn, Hudson River Valley, Michigan, Indiana, and all the windows in between.”

Song recorded and mixed by Alex Inglizian at Experimental Sound Studio. Mastered by Peter Andreadis at All City Mastering. Performed by: Annie Higgins: piano/vocals, Jason Toth: drums, Joshua Dumas: electronics, James Falzone: clarinet